Milk Rainbow Science

Reagan read Leprechaun in Late Winter over the summer.  At the end of the book, there is a rainbow science experiment that we finally got around to doing today.  We have actually done this experiment before, and I'm sure it's on the blog somewhere.

To do the experiment, we put a thin layer of whole milk in a shallow bowl.  Then looking at the bowl as a face of a clock, we put two drops of red food coloring at 12, two drops of yellow food coloring at 4, and two drops of blue food coloring at 8.  Then we dipped toothpicks in dish soap and Collin and Reagan poked the toothpicks into the areas with food coloring.  This breaks the surface tension and causes the food coloring to move and swirl.  I always expect it to work better than it does, but it's still fun.  Also, the actual experiment in the book says to put a squirt of dish soap in the center of the bowl, but I think our bowl is too big because this did nothing.  I went online (what did we do before the internet?) and found the idea to dip the toothpicks in the dish soap and penetrate the food coloring areas.  It worked.